Book of Jobs: A Collection of Helen Wu and Amy Dresden by M.L. Grider


Publisher:  Thursday Night Press, an imprint of DX Varos Publishing (October 18, 2022)
Category: Crime drama, LGBT subgenre, Short Story Collection
Tour Dates October, 2022
ISBN: 978-1955065542
Available in Print and ebook, 292 pages

Description Book of Jobs by M.L. Grider

In this prequel to Bitter Vintage, M.L. Grider explores events in the lives of Helen Wu and Amy Dresden prior to their adventure in 1995. While these incidents may seem at first glance unrelated, they all contribute to what makes Amy and Helen who they are.

Some are funny, others tragic, but that all adds up to why Helen quit the LAPD in favor of a gun shop, and Amy gave up her dream of acting to become an antique dealer.

Interview with M.L. Grider

TR: Please tell us something about The Book Of Jobs that is not in the summary. (About the book, characters you particularly enjoyed writing etc.)

MLG: It was challenging to write a book involving more internalized character struggles for Helen and Amy rather than having a clearly defined antagonist to come into conflict with. In these stories, I had a chance to get more into their heads than in Bitter Vintage.

In ‘The Paint Job’ Amy is forced to confront the repressed parts of he own identity as much as her frustration with her failing acting career. In ‘Job Choices’ and ‘New on the Job’ Helen must confront her own lack of empathy and understand how to cope with other people. Both of them must redefine who they are and who they want to be.

TR: I always enjoy looking at the names that authors choose to give their characters. Where do you derive the names of your characters? Are they based on real people you knew or now know in real life? How do you create names for your characters?

MLG: Names for major characters more or less just come to me as the character does.

Helen Wu has just always been Helen Wu. Amy was always Amy, but she had several last names before settling on Dresden. I wanted it to be something ethnic and a little awkward, that a manager would want her change to something more glamorous like Winona Ryder from Winona Horowitz, Natalie Wood from Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, or Judy Garland from Frances Gumm, but she would refuse to. I knew it had to be a German surname. I had very nearly settled on Amy Vonnegut, in tribute to the brilliant Kurt Vonnegut when I saw a documentary about Ellis Island and how many immigrants had lost their real names when bureaucrats either misspelled them or simplified them for the paperwork. So her family name became the city her great grandfather emigrated from, Dresden, the city where Billy Pilgrim was a POW in Vonnegut’s masterpiece Slaughterhouse Five.

None of my characters and all of my characters are based on real people. Some of Amy Dresden’s personality quarks and back story are borrowed from two real women I did know. But I wouldn’t say she is based on either of them. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Many of the supporting characters are “inspired” by people I have known but not directly taken from any one real person. Some traits came from fictional charters as well. There is a lot of Clarice Starling and Harry Callahan in Helen Wu.

TR: Where did you get the inspiration for your cover?

MLG: The cover for The Book of Jobs was very difficult for me. Because it is 9 separate stories there is no one defining moment that could represent them all. The thing that ties them all together is Helen and Amy but they only have one brief scene together in ‘The Paint Job’ and that is only in passing. Nothing dramatic is happening. So my publisher and the cover artist came up with the image of the two of them over the city.

TR: Which actresses would you like to see playing Helen and Amy from ‘The Book Of Jobs’ if it were optioned for a movie or series?

MLG: Oh that’s easy. I always try to imagine an actor in the part of any of my characters. If I have a specific face in mind for each it helps me keep them consistent in descriptions. Actor, director and producer Joan Chen has always been the inspiration for Helen Wu. Actor and model Stacy Fuson is the face and body of Amy Dresden. At least that is how I imagine them.

TR: What draws you to the crime genre?

MLG: That’s hard to say. I am working on some other genre as well. I have a handful of other stories that include supernatural elements as well a crime. ‘The Odd Job’ is a good example of that. I think the thing about the crime genre that appeals to me it that it is so close to home. You could come home from work and find your home has been robbed. An argument with your neighbor gradually escalates into a firefight. True crime is always just under the surface.

TR: Describe the room you are sitting in as though it was a scene that Amy was describing.

MLG: The basement office was dominated by an overflowing book collection occupying well-crafted handmade floor to ceiling book shelves, taking up an entire wall. The desk in the center of the room was less well-made from mostly scrap particle board and was painted white to match the bookshelves. Distracting from the poor carpentry of the desk is a three-foot-deep shelf displaying an intricate diorama of customized 1970s G.I. Joe action figures.

TR: How about if Helen was describing it?

MLG: The office was cluttered with books and old dolls. Whoever worked here must have been some kind of headcase.

TR: When did you first have a desire to write? How did this desire manifest itself?

MLG: I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t want to write. Even as a child, people like Jules Verne and J.R.R. Tolkien were my heroes. But having dyslexia made that challenging. Learning to read was very difficult for me and to this day I am not able to spell. My handicap in spelling was largely why I became a professional photographer.

For many years I filled my need for story telling by playing Dungeons and Dragons.

TR: What is next for Helen and Amy?

MLG: I am currently editing a story collection called The Con Job set at a comic book convention in 1991. It will prominently feature a Helen Wu adventure and an Amy Dresden story, as well as other interwoven stories that all took place simultaneously at the “con from Hell.”

I am also hard at work on Bitter Sacrament a new novel set in 1997 in which Amy and Helen must contend with a murderous religious cult.

About M.L. Grider

The Book of Jobs is the second published novel to escape the twisted mind of M.L. Grider. In addition to writing, Grider is a professional photographer. He is busy at work on the next adventure in the Helen Wu series among other wild and warped stories.

Website: https://www.dxvaros.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DXVaros
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DXVaros.Publishing

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